packaging design, typography, layout, hotness

i've been seeing more and more funky designs or wraps on beer bottles lately. as a designer, i thought they were pretty cool until i talke to my brother who owns a bar and he said that all the bar tenders hate them because you can't tell when somebody needs a fresh one.

the one thing that stopped me from posting that, geared, was that damn coca cola logo on it. i wished they'd have had big enough balls to let 'blak' stand on it's own - would have made for a far sexier bottle. (imo, of course ;))

Rubber finger probes sense of touch

What is it about a cat's fur that makes us want to stroke it, and how do you create a rubbery grip that you just can't resist squeezing? An artificial finger that can gauge a raft of tactile characteristics for materials should help to find out.

Cathy Barnes and colleagues at the University of Leeds, UK, are building the life-size silicone rubber finger. To get the measure of how rough or smooth a material is, they place a sample on a pressure-sensitive platform and allow an attached motor to "stroke" the finger across it. Software then compares the sideways pressure that the platform feels with the sideways force applied to the finger. This gives a reading for friction or roughness.

At the same time, the software gauges how much downwards force the material absorbs by comparing the force applied by the finger with the force felt by the platform. Softer materials absorb more force. Meanwhile, a sensor at the finger's tip measures temperature.

The researchers plan to get volunteers to touch different materials and supply descriptions of what they feel to match the artificial finger's data on the same materials. They hope to gather all the smoothness, softness and temperature measurements associated with a range of tactile sensations.

The team plans to use these to design packaging materials. "Industry knows a lot about the importance of the visual design of packaging but there's a lack of understanding about the feel appeal," says Barnes, who is also a manager at the Faraday Packaging Partnership in Leeds. "Imagine a carton of fruit juice that's as soft as peach skin."

This is thinking outside the â€˜boxâ€™. Reebokâ€™s new packaging for their mountain climbing shoes reflects their purpose by sticking it to the box lid. The packaging is carried out by McCann Erickson India.